HSM December: Special Occasion

Birth of the Virgin 1365

Now that it is December, I regret how few of the Historical Sew Monthly Challenges I managed to do. They always help me push my boundaries and get something actually done!  This December challenge was no different.  Our local SCA Barony was having a Midwinter feast set in 14th century Italy.  I had originally planned to just wear something 16th century that I already had.  Then a friend challenged me to join him wearing 14th century and I remembered that I could use this for HSM December!  So this was a perfect fit! 

cutting the gown front with leaf detail

First I did some research and decided I loved the gown on the lady on the right in this image.  This image is a detail shot of a fresco by Giovanni da Milano in the Rinuccini Chapel in Santa Croce, Florence.  This fresco depicts the Life of the Virgin  and this detail is from the birth of the Virgin panel.  Giovanni da Milano was active from 1345-1369 and this fresco is dated 1365.  I absolutely love the leaf detail down the front of the gown!  However, I quickly decided I needed to use fabric I already owned as I already have a sizable stash.  So this eliminated a true copy as I have no white wool.  I did have some tropical weight blue/gray wool gabardine however, so I threw it in the washer and the dryer to felt it up a bit.  While the wool was washing and felting, I drafted a quick kirtle pattern and a quick leaf pattern.  I then cut the gown and sleeves from the wool and used the leaf pattern La Cotte Simple and was fairly happy with how they came out!  The then used the remaining silk for straight cut binding for the cuffs and collar of the gown.  I did this for 2 reasons, one there appears to be some binding at these points in the fresco and two, I have a skin reaction to wool so I wanted to bind the places that might touch around my underdress and shift.  The straight binding does not behave nicely on the neckline however, so I will need to fix this in the future!

hand sewing the wool to silk

silk bound buttonholes

Cutting the leaves was a bit tedious, but the effect was worth it!  I then searched the stash for a color of silk or wool that would contrast nicely with the blue/gray wool and found some cream colored silk satin left over from an old project.  There was not enough to cut the front panels in a single piece so I had to piece the front.  Due to the detail of the leaves, I had to hand sew the wool to the silk.  I was not sure if the leaves would have been sewn down or left free, so I decided to leave them free.  I also decided to add a front closure, as I am usually dressing myself! I used small round metal buttons and hand made buttonholes.  Hand done buttonholes make me really nervous, but I felt machine buttonholes would look terrible down the front of a dress like this.  Since I had never hand sewn buttonholes from this time period before, I used the tutorial from

For headwear, I wanted something more than what the lady in the fresco was wearing so I spent some time looking and some favorite blogs of mine for ideas. I decided I wanted a St. Brigitta's cap with embroidery and a D-shaped veil after looking a Katafalk. I am not going to post any in progress picks on these two since they basically followed tutorials from Katafalk, Cathrin has a wonderful guide toveil shapes and instructions for both a plain and a fancy St. Brigitta's cap.  I did simplify the insertion stitch since my thread turned out to be too thick for the fancy stitch Cathrin did. I also altered the band embroidery just because I felt like it.

St. Brigitta's cap

insertion stitch and embroidery

Here are some images of the full outfit and one event picture!  I really enjoyed this style and will likely make more in the future.  I also really want a frilled veil!

 

Historical Sew Monthly May: Holes or in my case fixing them

I know this entry is woefully late, but I did in fact finally finish it!   I am however too late I feel to post on the facebook page, so I am only posting it here!

When the May challenge came up, Holes, I immediately thought of Landsknecht fashion of the late 15th and early 16th century. This time period and fashion style is one of my all time favorites and I immediately wanted to make something completely new.  Then I remembered the dress sitting in the naughty pile.  I dont know if other costumers have a naughty pile, but this is where sewing projects or outfits go that did not go as planned and now require some work I really dont want to do. Examples of this are usually that the sleeves are wonky and I really dont want to redo them.






In the case of this dress, I put the whole dress together out of linen (black) and wool (blue).  The blue wool is woven, so I washed it with hot water and dried it in the dryer on hot.  This shrunk the wool, but also thickened it and strengthened it so it can handle the open cutwork.  The fabric looked good, so I designed the cutwork and carefully cut out the design in the blue wool.  I then hand stitched the white bands (left over linen from a previous project) to the bodice and pieced the white and black bands for the skirt. I then handstitched the blue bands over the white bands. 

Since I have made several of these dresses, the pattern was already worked out, the banding went very quickly.  I decided to see if lacing was a functional option for the the fronts of these gowns, so I stitched eyes (the eye part of hook and eye sets) to the inside of the bodice opening.  The eyes were off set to allow spiral lacing and also went into the dress very quickly.  All in all, this dress took about a week of working in the evenings so I was very chuffed with myself!  I then wore the dress to the Maryland Rennaisance Faire.  When I returned, I noticed I had ripped some of the blue wool and thought "Wow, I must have really caught the skirt on something sharp!"  I repaired the rip and ignored the whole incident. Fast forward about 6 months (and a cross country move) and I wore the dress again to a local SCA event.

This time I felt the skirt catch and rip!  When I got home, I found multiple rips in the blue wool that occurred at a specific place in my design.  I realized that my choice of cutwork design plus the wool being thinner than the wool I usually use meant that there was a systematic weakness in my design.  Really, there should never be too open shapes that close together with the grain straight between them as you can see in the ripped image to the left.  I realized I would either need to replace the lower cutwork band with a totally different fabric (this is totally a correct for the style solution), deal with repairing the rips every time I wore the dress or hand stitching down around the cut outs to stabilize them.  I did not want to do any of these things and I was frustrated with myself for not seeing the design flaw that I threw the whole dress into the naughty pile!


The dress stayed in the naughty pile until this challenge.  You see, I love the color combination and I love the way this dress looks and moves when I am wearing it so I decided that fixing this dress should be my goal for the May challenge.  I decided I loved the color combination and the lower cutwork band so replacing it was not a good option.  I also decided repairing the rips as they happened was not a good option either, so I decided to hand stitch around each cutwork motif by hand.  First I repaired the rips and then each motif took me 40 minutes to stitch. There were 16 motifs, so the total time was about 11 hours of hand sewing.   Here are images of the newly handstitched motifs. There are 2 different motifs that alternate on the lower band.

While this took a really long time, I am so happy to be able to wear this dress again!  I am even thinking of making a special chemise with blackwork or smocking details on the sleeves to showcase the dress!  Here are some detail pictures of the final dress.

The Challenge: Holes!
Material: linen (black and white), woven wool (blue)
Pattern:self drafted from woodcut images
Year:1510-1530
Notions: metal eyes, thread (poly), cotton cording
How historically accurate is it? Maybe 70%, the pattern is accurate and the cutwork is based on woodcuts.  However the dress would have most likely been all wool, the thread would have been linen, the eyelets hand made and the cording silk, linen or wool so there were compromises on the materials.  Also, while sleeveless is document-able, it is rare and I dont have an image with both cutwork and sleeveless on the same dress. Finally, of the outfits for Landsknecht we have color descriptions of, this would be very tame and may not have been the best choice on my part.
Hours to complete: Initial construction was ~20 hours and this current batch was 11 to fix the holes
First worn: In the current incarnation, not yet
Total cost: none, all this was stash

HSM March 2016: Protection

The HSM challenge for this month was protection, either something to protect yourself or your clothes.  I thought this would be a great opportunity to make an apron to wear with my 16th Century Kampfrau outfits.

My inspiration for the apron is the Seamstress by Edward Schoen, dated 1535.  Her apron looks smocked so I decided to smock my apron as well.  Smocking on aprons does not seem to have been very common.  Looking at historical images, there are many plain white aprons, some colored aprons and a bunch that are embroidered, but only a few that are smocked. For historical references I recommend http://www.larsdatter.com/aprons.htm
This is a wonderful source for all kinds of clothing and accessories.

First, I hemmed the 3 edges that would not be smocked.  Then I did the smocking.

I have previously smocked things, but I have never done honeycomb smocking.  A look at my inspiration image suggested this is honeycomb smocking, so I decided to try it.  This is a really easy method of smocking, you basically mark your points (mine is a 1cm grid) and then stitch 2 dots together, alternating by rows to create the pattern.  For example, on the top row, I connected dots 1&2, 3&4 ect.  On the second row I connected dots 2&3 and 4&5 ext.  You stitch 2 rows at a time, so I did row 1 dots 1&2 then dove down to row 2 dots 2&3, then back up to row 1 dots 3&4 and so on.  I did not use a tutorial, but there are many available online if this description is confusing.

EDIT:  I could not remember where I read that 1cm marks made great smocking for garb, but I have now found it.  Many very cool tutorials and information are available on this page Katafalk, and the discussion on smocking is under her Hemd tutorial. 

Here is a close up of the smocking.

Once the smocking was done, I hand stitched the top of the apron to the fabric that would form the tie.  I then folded the tie fabric in half and stitched the tie together, hiding the raw edges as I went.  In the photo below you can see the tie at the top of the smocking.

Finally, here is a picture of the full apron!  I think it will be a great addition to my kit and provide me a nice apron for keeping my dresses clean.

The Challenge:Protection
Material:Linen
Pattern: None, this is really just 2 scraps of linen.  The body of the apron is a rectangle twice as wide as I wanted the final apron to be and as long as was available.  The smocking decreases the width by about half.  The ties are a long strip of linen folded in half with the edges tucked while sewing.
Year: 1535
Notions: yellow silk thread for smocking and white poly-cotton thread for the rest of the sewing.
How historically accurate is it? 80% or so.  While this apron is based off of a woodcut of the time period, I do not know what it would have been made out of, linen is an educated guess.  I am also unsure what the smocking would have been stitched with, silk is known in the period but may not have been available to a woman of this class.  Also, the color yellow was chosen because I had yellow silk laying around, I have no evidence that yellow would have been used for this application.  Finally, the white thread used for the construction was poly-cotton because I had it on hand, obviously this is not an historically accurate thread for the 16th century.
Hours to complete: Around 10, this was my first time doing this type of smocking and I was a bit slow at it.
First worn: not yet, hopefully I will wear it April 9th
Total cost: None, every thing was out of my stash of scraps.

HSM 2016: January Procrastination Challenge

I am going to try the Historical Sew Monthly challenges again, I found they really helped me complete items I might otherwise never get done.  The first challenge was Procrastination and I figured what better to work on than the embroidered pouch for my husband.  In looking back through my blog, I realized that this project was started in 2014 and here we are 2016 and it was not done. 

To start with, I took the embroidery and cut it out into a circle. I stitched the circle down by hand to a rectangle of black linen and then embroidered over the edge of the circle with blanket stitch with the blue silk.  I also added a line of running stitch in red silk and a line of chain stitch in green silk to help the circle edge stay flat.   The lining is the same black linen, with a pocket added to fit important things that you dont want just shoved into a pouch (likely this will hold my husband's cell phone to keep it separate from the keys and wallet).

To finish this pouch, I sewed up the sides, leaving space for drawstring channels, and added the lining by hand.  I then stitched drawstring channels by hand.  Once the pouch was completed, I added some surface stitched thread for decoration and for a protective edge.  The thread should reduce the wear to the sides of the pouch and can easily be replaced if needed.  I carried this decorative edge over the top of the pouch as well.

While this edge almost looks braided it is not.  I took 2 loops of thread, one blue and one green, and brought them out from inside the pouch (this hides the knots on the inside).  I pulled the green loop through the center of the blue loop and then stitched the blue loop down without catching the green loop.  Now reverse this, pull the blue loop through the center of the green loop and stitch the green loop down.  When this is done along the entire edge it looks like braid. 

I then did some simple 3-ply braids for the drawstrings and my husband braided a 5 loop finger loop braid for the hanger all out of the silk thread.  The finger loop braid was stitched to the top of the pouch to provide a method to hang the pouch from a belt, that is not the drawstrings to make sure you have easy access to the stuff inside. Here is a picture of the red, green and blue finger loop braid.

The final touch was some silk tassels made for the bottom of the pouch.  Here is the finished pouch and the details.

The Challenge: Procrastination, January 2016
Material: black linen, white linen, silk floss
Pattern:  none, it is a simple rectangle for the pouch and the embroidered image was based on something I had saved on my computer and altered to my taste for the embroidery.
Year:10th-12th century
Notions: needles and black sewing thread (old spool with unknown content)
How historically accurate is it? The look is good and the linen and silk are correct materials.  However the embroidery pattern is more based on the time period that any true reproduction and the elements of the pouch are gathered from several sources so it is unclear if they would have been used together.  I am going to say 80% or so.
Hours to complete:  The base embroidery took 29 hours.  To do the rest of the work was another 10, so a total of 39 hours.  However the base embroidery was done in 2014, so the total in the past month was only 10 hours.
First worn: Not yet, but it has been given to my husband as a gift
Total cost: All stash, so no current cost.

HSM 2015 Challenge #12 Re-do

So the piece I decided to create could be for several challenges, it is blue (Challenge #2), it is from my stash (Challenge #3), it is English Regency time period (so appropriate for War and Peace, Challenge #4) and it is an accessory (Challenge #7).  Mostly I made this piece because I really wanted to complete the blue challenge as it is my favorite color and I am still working on the actual piece I proposed to finish.  It was important to me to finish a blue piece within this year and I had a piece of blue silk in my stash.  I really needed this piece to be entirely from my stash for cost reasons.

I would really like to thank the Couture Courtesan as she was the inspiration for this piece.  She posted her version and links to originals in January and I have been wanting to make one ever since.  I just loved her version so much.  Here is my version of the little round reticule.

Originally, I was going to do a more complicated embroidery, but realized I did not have the time.  The embroidery is simple gold metal thread couched down in a spiral pattern and some left over gold spangles from a previous project.  The one thing I am really not sure about is the pearl tassels, I like the way they look but they are pretty modern in design.  I had them laying around in the stash, but may replace them with some hand made silk tassels in the future. 

The Challenge: Re-do
Fabric: change-able silk
Pattern: made up from the post by the Couture Courtesan found here. She discussed her pattern and I adjusted it a little bit due to my materials but I followed her directions.
Year:  Early 19th century
Notions: thread, gold spangles, gold metal thread, pasteboard, pearl tassels, changeable ribbon
How historically accurate is it? Maybe 80-90%?  The whole thing is handsewn, but the ribbon is synthetic and the tassels are not right.  Also the embroidery design was made up by me rather than based on an original.
Hours to complete: 7 hours
First worn: not yet, hopefully in the new year
Total cost:  none, all stashed supplies
 

HSM Challenge #7 Accessorize

Diadem flat, before comb addition so you can see the detail

Technically this is not sewing, so it only sort of counts for the HSM challenge but it is a project I have been dying to try.  I have always wanted a regency diadem, but was a bit intimidated of the detailed metalwork.  I have experience with metalwork and the details in the metal just take so long.  Then I saw the brilliant post by Mistress of Disguise! A full tutorial to make a regency diadem! She had the amazing idea to use lamp banding to create the very detailed part of the diadem.  Since this challenge was to Accessorize, I jumped at the chance to make one.  I am not going to post any kind of step by step pictures since the full tutorial provides very lovely and detailed photos and I only modified a few small things.  I did use my jeweler's saw instead of snips to cut out the brass frame.  This was because I used heavier brass and I did not want to have the break in the frame necessary for scissors.  Other than that, I used my dremmel to cut out the lamp banding flowers so I could save the neat edges for another project.  The rest of the project I just followed the tutorial.

Diadem ready to wear

I am so in love with the tutorial provided by Mistress of Disguise and so happy with my new jewelry!

I highly recommend trying her tutorial, this was far easier than I expected.  Also, if you want one and don't feel like making one, Mistress of Disguise sells them on her Etsy.

HSM for May: Practicality a simple set of Victorian Skirts

I was wandering around the internet trying to decide what I wanted to make for the May Practicality challenge when I ran across the skirts shown to the left.  I love these skirts and I love the pockets, they are so functional and yet stylish at the same time.  Even better, these skirts were one set of 3 that were the subject of a very well written article by Sunny Buchler for Your Wardrobe Unlock'd (for those with subscriptions, the article is here).

Sunny did a wonderful job fully analyzing these skirts and there was so much information to aid me in creating my own, yet I still managed to mess the skirts up pretty badly.  I have gone back a forth a couple of times on if I wanted to post about this attempt or not....but with all the talk lately in the online costume community about the myth of perfection, I figured I would go ahead and post anyway.  This was a good learning experience for me, particularly since I am still pretty uncomfortable with the construction of Victorian clothing.

The brown skirt set is from 1869-1874 and I love that the pockets on the front are no only functional but show staining that suggests they were actually used.  The original skirts were wool, but I had some brown twill laying around that I felt would be perfect.  I also decided to vary my skirts a bit from the original and add a 3rd color trim as a method to use up a ton of oyster colored bias tape that has been sitting around my stash forever.  I was inspired to do this because the pockets on the original were piped and I also had matching oyster colored piping in the stash I could use on my own pockets.

Sunny's analysis was absolutely wonderful!  She provided information on the number, size and type of pleat for every position on the skirt.  Using her article, I easily made the underskirt.  The underskirt is kept fairly flat in the front with only one very shallow and wide pleat. The majority of the fullness in the skirt was kept to the back.  The sides of the skirt had knife pleats with a set of stacked pleats in the center back for fullness.  The is skirt is really very satisfying to wear as it moves beautifully!

Underskirt Front

Underskirt Back

  The overskirt is where I got myself into trouble and I should have realized it earlier in the process before construction.  I remember thinking I would probably not have enough fabric for both skirts and that I would likely have to piece the underskirt significantly.  When I made the pattern pieces and laid them out somehow they fit.  I should have realized this suggested that I made the pattern wrong and I should have remeasured the pieces and compared again to the original article.  I missed adding the measurements for the fact that the overskirt also had layered pleats in the back and only added enough for single pleats. Now the overskirt is way too narrow across the back bustle area.  As a result, the lack of room across the back pulls the sides of the over skirt back and creates a very narrow front silhouette.  As you can see below how narrow the skirt is from the front and the pulling across the back.

Both skirts Front

Both skirts Back

I do like the way the pockets came out, although I attached them upside down from the original (oops!). And I do like the way the buttons came out.  I was a bit leery of hand covering large buttons and if they would look OK, but I do love them. 

I have since fixed the pattern issue, but I cannot get more of the twill to match.  The brown set of skirts will need to stay too narrow, so they will not be appropriate for Victorian wear.  I think I will keep these skirts for Steampunk, but I plan to make a new set of skirts using the corrected pattern for actual Victorian wear.  I guess I can say that my May Practicality challenge produced a pattern, if not actual skirts! And I learned quite a bit from this experience.

HSM for March: stashbusting a Regency hat

For the few of you asking what happened to the blue challenge in February, I am still working on it but the handwork is taking forever.....I do intend to finish the dress one day but February was unfortunately very optimistic for me.

The HSM challenge for the month March was Stashbusting.  Like almost every costumer I know, I have a ton of accumulated stuff.....bits of fabric that was perfect or cheap or maybe a bit of trim that was too much to throw away but too little for most projects.  Stashbusting is a good thing and something I need to do far more often as my stash is embarrassingly large.  In searching through my stuff I found a lovely piece of dupioni silk in forest green. This piece has been in my stash for years and is too small for anything other than a hat or a purse.  I have been in need of a new Regency hat so I decided on a quick Regency hat for my stash project.  Going through the rest of my stash, I found buckram, millinery wire, flannel, gold buttons, gold and green trim, a small piece of gold ribbon, green glass bead trim and forest green thread.  This project came entirely from my stash at hand.

 My inspirations for the shape were the Quickie Capote by Jen Thompson of Festive Attyre and the fashion plates webbed by Ginger from Scene in the Past on her flickr page.  However, I did make most of my hat up rather than copy any thing exactly simply based on personal preference.

Basically, I played around with paper until I got a brim shape and size I liked the look of. Once I had the size, I cut the brim out of 2 layers of millinery buckram and then machine stitched wire around the entire brim. 

The wire was stitched down using zig zag stitch and the edges of the wire were just overlapped by several inches as you can see in the photo.  The stitching of the wire was the only machine sewing I did on this hat.  I just really hate to stitch wire down by hand.

Since the wire would easily show through the thin silk, I added a flannel layer (called mulling) to give the silk a smooth line and hide the millinery wire.  The flannel is just hand stitched down with big stitches.  
 At this point I held the brim up to my head and measured the distance around the back of my head not covered by the brim.  For me this was 7 inches.  I needed this measurement to cut a small piece of the silk that could be used to bind the edge of the gathered back of the hat that would not be hidden by the brim.  I cut an 8 inch (1/2 inch added to each side for seam allowance) strip 2 inches wide to bind the back of the hat.

Hat back

The back of the hat is simply a huge circle gathered to fit the brim and the 8 inch strip of silk.  In my case, I have very long hair and often need to make extra room in my hats to accommodate my hair. If you are making your own hat a smaller circle may suffice.  Mine is 26 inches across. Since the silk is so thin, I flat lined it with some cotton muslin I had laying around to give it a bit of body.  The gathered circle was handstitched into the brim and the small strip of silk.  Then the brim lining was handstitched  down to hide the raw edges. 

Hat side

Hat front

The hat is decorated with some stash buttons and stash trim. All the decorations are handstitched onto the hat.  Although I needed lots of room for my hair, I felt the back of the hat could use some structure.  I took inspiration from Jen Thompson's Quickie Capote and gathered the very center of my big circle of fabric to make pleats.  I covered this gather with a button from my stash. 


The Challenge: Stashbusting

Fabric: green silk dupioni, white cotton muslin and cotton flannel
Pattern: none

Year: early 19th century Regency
Notions: thread, buttons, antique glass beaded trim, gold ribbon, gold and green braided trim, millinery buckram, millinery wire
How historically accurate is it? Maybe 70%? I made up the pattern and it is more likely historically inspired rather than historically accurate. Also, I am not sure if this grade of silk would have been used in the Regency period. 
Hours to complete: 15
First worn:  not yet
Total cost:  None, all of this was from my stash.
Stashed for how long? The trim and fabric have been stashed for at least 8 years.  The buttons are part of of a button stash passed onto me by my mother-in-law 16 years ago, so I have no idea how old they are!

HSM February: thinking about the color blue

The challenge for February is the color Azure. Blue is my favorite color and I am so excited by this challenge and immediately wanted to make a new dress in my favorite color.  However, when I was going through my stuff to decide what to make, I found an old dress that has been relegated to the back of the closet due to some fairly minor issues, and this dress is blue.  This dress was made after one of my favorite paintings of all time.

I found this painting while wandering around on the amazing Realm of Venus site.  I actually used this painting as my inspiration for my 2011 entry in the Italian Renaissance Costume Challenge (now in it's 5th year).  However there were a few things I really disliked about my dress and these have prevented me from wearing it.  In fact, I have only worn this dress once for only a few hours and  about an hour for pictures. Here are my original images of the dress.  I feel this dress looks reasonably nice from 5 feet away, but some of the details make me unhappy. 

Problem number 1, the bodice:  I tried a new method of lacing this dress. I had previously used Jen Thompson's of Festive Attyre ladder lacing method (which I dont think is currently available on her site). Jen's method worked wonderfully, but there was some discussion at the time if rings or some other method might be more historically correct.  So I tried rings.  There are rings on each side of the bodice and the lacing is ladder lacing in 2 directions.  I hate that the rings caused buckling and I hate that the ribbon shows running vertically between the rings.  I am not sure what I will do to fix this but I need to fix it or I will never be happy wearing this dress.






Problem number 2, the sleeves:  This is actually a set of problems.  First, I love the sleeves but my guess at construction leaves something to be desired.  I have done cut outs like the sleeves only 2 times.  The first time was on a attempt at a replica of the costume worn by the evil stepmother in Sleepy Hallow. This dress was made with modern synthetic velvet.  To make the cut outs in the velvet, I drew the design in fray check on the back of the fabric and then carefully cut the design out.  This worked beautifully and the design was easy to stitch to the base fabric on the bodice.  The fray check left the edges sealed enough that the stitching did not need to be super close together and could be very close to the edge since the fray check sealed the edges of the cut so well.

However, the fabric for the Venetian gown is 100% cotton velveteen. The fray check stained the heck out of this fabric and I needed a different method to stabilize the designs.  I decided to use wonderunder since it would let me iron the design on to the sleeves and then hand stitch to stabilize.  I tried to take tiny stitches close to the edge of the design to keep the stitching invisible and spaced the stitching out similar to the Sleepy Hallow bodice.  Unfortunately, the wonderunder is far less stabilizing and the velvet started fraying on my first wearing.  I need to go back and hand stitch with larger stitches and much closer together.  Also, I don't like the lace at the cuffs.  This was the best lace I could find at the time, but I think it looks terrible and I want to replace it.  Finally, I don't like the sleeve head treatment.  Since you cannot see the sleeve head treatment on the inspiration portrait, I wandered around the Realm of Venus site to look at other treatments.  The white puffs with buttons seems fairly common, but my execution leaves much to be desired.  The white puffs are made of too heavy of fabric and the ribbon was not substantial enough to stabilize the heavy metal buttons.  I think the final sleeve head treatment just looks floppy.  I hope to redo the handstitching to better stabilize the velveteen, add new lace and fix up the sleeve heads to better fit my vision.

I am still waffling on making something completely new, but I would really love to get this dress to the point where I could actually enjoy wearing it.